Lace and Broken Electronic Devices

It has been pretty eventful around here lately, for many reasons. I guess I'll try to go in the order of events.

First off, I decided to try something new this week which was inspired by this dress that I found at the thrift store.

 

I thought this dress was pretty cute to start with (minus the collar). It is a simple, black pin stripe, long sleeve shirt dress. So, this week, instead of making it to fit me, I decided to leave it the size it already is and just add a few details here and there; then post it on etsy and let someone else enjoy it! :)

With that plan in action, I went to work, but unfortunately I have no pictures because of the next event that happened last week-my camera fell off the table and the lens broke. Uhhhgg, I was sooooo mad at myself, even though I know it was just an accident. Boo. So I have no pictures of the process of working on this dress. The lens does still kind of work, but the pictures just aren't good at all. 

The next event happened the very next morning when I went to turn on my laptop and nothing. Wouldn't turn on AT ALL. Once again, Uhhhgg. Turns out the motherboard is fried, though it was completely fine the night before when I shut it down. Needless to say, it was not a good week around our house for electronic stuff. 

The good news is we got a new laptop on Sunday after church. We splurged and got a MacBook Pro and I LOVE it so far!

The bad news is, we are still working on getting a lens for my camera, so we will have to suffer through with sub-par pictures for now.

So anyway, back to the dress; I decided to take off the white collar, sew down the sides to make a v-neck and sew on some ruffled lace. I also sewed on some lace at the bottom of the dress as well.

Here is my attempt at getting a decent picture:

 

I am going to post this on etsy once I get some good photos taken, but you get the general idea. The dress is a size 14, but could be a smaller size with a belt.

Here is where I need your guy's opinion- would you like to see more pieces like this one, where the dress is not altered to fit myself and post them on etsy? I'm sure you've noticed that I have started posting some of the items on etsy, mainly because I'm going to run out of room in my closet, I don't need a bajillion dresses, and I would rather have someone else enjoy it then it just hanging in my closet. I would love to hear what you guys think! :-)

Butterfly Sundress

It has been up in the 40s around here lately, so I'm getting all summer minded! :) Okay, so it may be a bit early to be getting excited for summer, but it will be here before we know it, right?

This dress caught my eye in the thrift store last week...

 

How cute is that! Well, for the most part...

What I liked about this dress:

-I love, LOVE the lavender stripes
-I really like the summer-y feel

I am not so crazy about the bright tie-dyed butterflies. They aren't horrible, but it just seemed like there were a few too many.

My husband (he really is amazing by the way) gave me the idea to make a cute little summer tote bag (those are my words, not his, haha). So leading up to when I actually started working on this, I thought I would make a tote bag; but I just kept thinking how it would make such a cute little dress!

So I gave in and went to work on making a cute little beachy/summery sundress!
I started by cutting off the top (which included some of those in-your-face butterflies).

I thought about cutting out the other butterflies toward the bottom, but then the dress would have been crazy short, and I liked the current length, so I decided that they would stay-they are kind of cute in small amounts, and in a summery dress :)

Since there was no zipper in this dress (which by the way, made it really, really hard to get on before I cut off the top...seriously, my head barely fit through, and I don't think I have an abnormally large head or anything) I decided to go with elastic to hold up the dress.

I sewed the casing for the elastic, fed it through, and then sewed the ends to secure it.

I then hand sewed the opening and voila! It was finished!

 

All ready for summertime! Oh, and I forgot to mention that the dress has pockets! LOVE pockets!

Doesn't this just make you want to be at the beach? Or at least out in the sun! :)

I listed this super cute dress Here on my etsy shop. Since it is elastic top, it will fit sizes small-medium.

I also have been brainstorming with my awesomely creative sister on different options for vintage buttons. I came up with this the other day:

 

It is a vintage button bib style necklace. The base is actually a repurposed shoulder pad from the flower-tastic dress. I may have just found a use for all these shoulder pads I am collecting! :)

I listed this necklace and another one I made on my etsy as well :)

Linking to:

Sew Much Ado: We Did It Wednesday

Eisy Morgan: Inspired By You Wednesday

Paisley Passions: Thrilling Thursday  

The Speckled Dog: Favorite Things Friday

90s Flashback

Before I get to this week's project, I want to take a moment to express my excitement for my Little Black Dress being featured on 504 Main's Tickled Pink Friday! Yay! :) You should all go check it out, there are a lot of cool projects and recipes that people have linked up over there. I could spend literally hours looking at everything!

I also want to thank everyone for your comments. I really enjoy reading them and checking out your blogs! :)

Okay, so, the 90s....what an interesting time for clothing...

http://www.stylehive.com/tag/revival

Lots and lots of dresses like this one. It makes me think of Full House and Boy Meets World; the good 'ol shows. Though, I have to say that sometimes, I can see some of that 90s style here and there when I'm out shopping. Hmm. I guess that is okay, as long as it is updated a bit. Which brings us to the gem for this week:

Maybe that show Blossom too, anyone remember that one? This cute little number seems straight from the 90s, with the button down front, short skirt, and sweetheart type neckline. I should have thrown on a white t-shirt underneath and I could have called it done, haha! Just kidding.

What I liked about this piece:

-I did kind of like the neckline
-I liked that it actually fit me, so I wouldn't have to take it in at all :)

Oh, and there are no shoulder pads either (obviously) :)

I decided to transform this into a cute little tank top. I cut off the bottom part of the dress and hemmed up the bottom.
I thought it might be cute to attach some black ribbon to the bottom to change it up a little, so I basted with my sewing machine to gather the ribbon.

I then pinned it to the shirt and stitched over where I had hemmed the bottom to attach the ribbon.

And that was it! It was a pretty short project this week.

Here is a closer up view so you can see the ribbon better:

Much, much better now. I whipped up a little fabric broach with a vintage button to add a little color. I used the same tutorial for the fabric ring that I linked to in last week's post and just glued a pin on the back.


This little tank is ready for summer! (though I will take any temperature above freezing for right now!) :-)

I have been up to a few other projects lately, one being a project that I started last month and finally finished; it took so long because it required some spray  painting (outside in the cold, boo) and printing off pictures from our Europe Trip.
I scored these cute frames from Goodwill for cheap:

But I didn't like the color, so I decided to spray paint them (which is kind of stressful when you have to run out in the snow, spray them down quick and run them back in the house). I primed them and then painted them this hammered metal look Krylon spray paint.

Here is the before picture of our living room wall (well we had a picture up, but I took it down):

And the after:

 

Much better! I LOVE the scroll work decor- I got it from Hobby Lobby when it was 1/2 off. 

The best part about these is that I can change out the pictures whenever I want! :)

Update: I am listing the tank on my Etsy :-)

Linked to:

Sew Much Ado: We Did It Wednesday

Paisley Passions: Thrilling Thursday

The Speckled Dog: Favorite Things Friday 

 

Vintage Inspired Vest

I hope everyone is staying safe and warm during this crazy winter weather. I'll say it once again, I CANNOT wait until spring! I'm so over winter at this point.

This week's creation was quite an involved one, compared to past projects. I had quite a few ideas, changed some as I went that didn't work, and also used fabric dye for the first time ever.
I'll go ahead and give my disclaimer now: I'm sorry about the weird white balance in some of the pictures...I don't know what my camera was set on!

Okay, here we go, I'll try to make this as concise as possible. :)

Here is the starting point:

 

When I came upon this in the thrift store, my first thought was a band uniform; my second thought was oooohh vintage! Since I felt quite a bit more inspired in vintage terms, we went with that mindset as opposed to the band uniform! 

This is a slight tangent, but does anyone still like Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman? Because I sure do!

Source: http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/35166/dr-quinn-medicine-woman-the-complete-series-megaset/

In fact, we have all 6 seasons and both the movies on dvd (yes, my husband got them all for me one Christmas and I loved it!)

I absolutely LOVE all those 1800s type of dresses! Sigh...if only we still could dress like that today and not have people think you are crazy.

I decided to use this picture that I googled as my inspiration for this particular project:

Source: http://allvintageclothing.net/victorianelegance.com/180011.html

I just love the bustled looking back part, how cute!

So I knew it was going to become a vest with a bustled back. I started by taking out the shoulder pads and taking off the sleeves.

(Once again, sorry about the white balance on the pictures)

After that, I took in the sides and then went about cutting the vest shape into the front.

Here is where things got a bit tricky (and I got a bit frustrated, happens to all of us right?) I thought that I would cut the back of the vest into a downward curve and then attach some ruffles, sounds good right?

Hmm...not so much. I did all that, but when I tried it on it looked really really strange. I could tell it wasn't going to look "bustled" at all, it was way too tight. So back to brainstorming I went.

After taking a little break, the next day I decided just to cut the back normal and then just make the ruffly part separate and attach it. This was a much better idea.

So I used the rest of my fabric and made this half moon type shape (that was about double the width of the vest so I  knew it could be gathered), hemmed the bottom up and also sewed close the slit that was in the skirt originally. I ended up having to shorten this part a lot-otherwise it just looked like shirt tails.

I did the same thing with the smaller portion of fabric that I cut off from the vest and sewed it on top of the larger half moon shape. I basted with my sewing machine so I could gather both pieces. I serged the two together so they wouldn't unravel.

Whew! Getting closer!
I sewed up the bottom of the vest, and then sewed on the gather part on the back.

After that was all done, I sewed up the arm holes.

Yay! Now onto the dying!
The color of this fabric wasn't bad, but it was quite see-through. My husband helped me pick out a dye color from walmart.

Royal blue! :) Who doesn't like blue?

I've never dyed anything before, but wasn't too hard. I followed the directions and didn't even make that big of a mess! :)

After I rinsed it, I ran it through a wash cycle.

Here is how it turned out:

I like the blue color a lot better than the off-white that it was before.

And the back:

 

I definitely branched out a little on this one, and I think I'm still on the fence about how it turned out. Any thoughts?

Another little note on the outfit, I really like the shoes I'm wearing. I just got them a couple of weeks ago from a thrift store- they are Guess and hardly worn, for $3.99...score! :)

And this cute little ring I made last week:

I made it from Happy Together's tutorial here.

Whew, I think that's it for now! :)

Linked to:

Sew Much Ado: We Did It! Wednesday

Paisley Passions: Thrilling Thursday Linky Party

504 Main: Tickled Pink Link Up 

The Speckled Dog: Favorite Things Friday

Thrifty Decor Chick: February Before & After  

The Dame Design Studio: 1st Fashion Friday Linky Party